In the Flesh?
by Darkclarkson
Summary: Part of "The Wall Series". Songfic based on the lyrics of the song "In the Flesh?" by Pink Floyd. Smiley returns home after the failure of Testify to find Haydon, hiding something in between the lines. Movieverse, one-shot.


**A/N: I do not own the rights to the novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, or any characters within, nor do I own the rights to the track "In The Flesh?" by Pink Floyd: they belong to John le Carre and Roger Waters.**

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Dedicated to Richard Wright (1943-2008), who helped shine a light on the crazy diamonds.

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Smiley softly shut the front door behind him and reached up slowly, to click the latch back into place. He inserted the key into the lock and twisted it, before hooking the chain onto the jamb. He set his travelling bag down, and crouched to pick up the morning's mail. There was no apparent outstanding mail; a postcard from Ann's sister, a couple of bills, and nothing else. Having rifled through them, he set them down on the cabinet, and started to fiddle with the black leather gloves he was sporting.

There was a creak from the living room. Smiley slowly raised his head, turning towards the door on the left, ajar. He listened quietly; he heard it again. A little creaking noise at regular intervals, like the sound of metal or burnished wood straining under weight. He held his gaze directly at the entrance, then glanced up the stairs, to where he had presumed Ann was: if she had been awake, she would have headed downstairs, the door would have not required unlatching and the post would have been picked up and placed on the side. This made the issue of the noises all the more troubling.

He was unarmed, of course. He was not a fan of violence, even in its tamest forms, preferring by far to deal with a situation through a battle of wills and wits, using the intellectual gifts they had been gifted. Any man could resort to physical actions, he reasoned, but for those of the mind, you required a special talent, an ability to foresee any situations. It was these skills that Smiley was currently using; the source of the noise was obviously a person, a male of medium build guessing by the level of creaking emitting, and he could estimate that they were slightly rocking in a chair at the dining table. He also knew that the man in question did not wish him ill; it would have been much easier to attack Smiley when he least expected it, as he was entering the house, and the quiet atmosphere of the house suggested that the man was simply… waiting for him.

Smiley wriggled his hands free of the leather and dropped them on top of the mail, then slowly began to wander towards the door, keeping his hands at his sides. He pushed the door gently with his foot and proceeded into the room, looking to his right. A dull grey light illuminated the room, bleeding through the closed curtains at the front, and the French windows at the back. His eyes were drawn to a package situated at the front of the table; a picture frame, with a painting, although he couldn't discern what from where he was standing. The room had a slightly smoky feel to it, albeit not a heavy one; indeed, the most overpowering aroma was that of alcohol, but not a significant enough odour to force an upset stomach. The colour of the room felt somewhat drained, the dark crimsons and greys of the walls dull compared to the polished white of the jambs and window frames.

"Good flight?"

Smiley turned his attention to the man sat in the chair on the far side of the table, leant back, slouched somewhat with his hands crossed in his lap, smiling tiredly at him. He had known Bill Haydon for a long time; almost three decades. He was only slightly older than Haydon himself, by a couple of years but on the surface, no-one would have said there was less than ten years between them. Perhaps it was because Smiley dressed older than Haydon; with his combed back greying blonde hair, lined face, a beige trenchcoat over his trim blue suits, a refined air of intellectuality and a quiet personality, Smiley gave off the air of a British version of a Hollywood private detective, a keen eye for detail, yet consistently having to trudge through his own issues in order to help confront the others for his clients. Haydon on the other hand, with his exotic ties, grey jackets, black curly locks, boyish charm and sometimes pseudo-aggressive stance, was a younger, more hot-headed worker, but one who still knew the game well enough to play it like a professional.

Right now though, Haydon looked his age. His face was tired, great purple bags underneath, his complexion slightly rough, and his smile more of a forced grimace. He looked as if he had had a terrible night, and Smiley would be prepared to guess that he had. He had a strange feeling that it had something to do with a mission he knew nothing about; a mission _none_ of them knew about.

He looked into Haydon's eyes. Bloodshot, ragged, they seemed to hold their own story. Smiley prided himself on his ability to discern people and their motives; Haydon was one of the few he couldn't. He had a perpetually skewered version of the man. He had always been able to look Haydon in the eye, until that fateful Christmas party three years ago. Since then, he had had no knowledge on how to interpret his colleague. But there was a genuinely dead haunted look in the; Haydon was upset, possibly even distraught.

Jim Prideaux, he thought. It was the only thing in the world that could tear Haydon up like this. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it registered that Haydon had asked him a question.

"Yes," he replied, snapping back to his senses and beginning to move into the light so he could see Haydon more clearly. "Pleasant enough," he added with a wry chuckle on the end; he didn't dislike flying, but it reminded him far too much of the war to be of any enjoyment.

"I was just passing and I thought I'd call in," Haydon continued, returning the wry smile as Smiley took in more of the surroundings; the fire was off, but there was some heat in the room, and the table had various documents scatter haphazardly as if Haydon had dropped them upon sitting down. A near-empty glass of gin sat on the table in front of him, the marks of his lips visible on the thin crystalized edges. The creaking was coming from the chair on which Haydon sat, as he shifted slightly, as if he was still trying to get comfortable. Whatever was wrong was certainly affecting the man in more ways than one Smiley thought. He was brought out of his musings when Haydon spoke again.

"Ann was in bed, but she insisted on getting up," Haydon continued, and again, that cold dead look came to the fore in his eyes. "Said she'd be down in a minute." He lowered his gaze and Smiley followed it to Haydon's feet under the table; he was wearing garish red socks and was trying to slip his feet back into his unlaced brown suede shoes, without much luck. He chose not to comment and glanced at Haydon again, who was still concentrating on the floor.

Who are you? he wondered to himself as he stared at one of his oldest associates; there was no room for friends in The Circus. Guillam was probably the closest he had, a bond formed only recently on a more personal level. Haydon was certainly a close associate, but in this business, there was no room for exceptions.

He moved forward again, dropping his gaze from Haydon to the painting sat on the edge of the table just in front of him. He was a fan of certain art himself, but his wife seemed to collect them by the dozen; he had a distinct feeling that if she was to live alone, all of her walls would be obscured by random artists impressions of the abstract, the mundane, the violent and the fabulous.

The painting itself would probably fall into the abstract category; four roughly equal large coloured squares formed the background; cherry red, grey blue, dark green and jet black. On top of the red was a smaller square of blue to one side, with a similar sized square of black mirroring it on the green below. The black square was nearly covered by a much larger rectangle, in a dull metallic silver. The colours both complimented and contradicted each other. Haydon's weary gaze followed Smiley's to the painting as he picked up the glass again.

"That's what I'm dropping off," he spoke softly, with a nod inclined towards the frame. "It's an awful daub, really."

Smiley nodded absently as he studied the colours again. As he stared at them, the pattern underneath the colours began to filter through his perception and spoke to him. He was not a man easily startled by such things; after all, he had made a career out of reading between the lines, breaking codes and anticipating moves, so reading subliminal messages, intended or not, was second nature to him.

Red; the danger.

Blue; the calm.

Green; the life.

Black; the death

All truths and all lies.

He glanced at Haydon, and again, the dark hollows behind his gaze were murky, too difficult to understand, yet open like a child's book, easy to read. For a man who had spent so much of his life keeping secrets, Smiley recognized a broken man when he saw one.

For the first time in his life, he felt as if he understood Bill Haydon.

"But, Ann expressed a liking." He drained the rest of his drink and settled the glass in his lap; his hands were shaking almost imperceptibly. He looked more defeated in that single moment than ever before, and Smiley wondered whether Haydon could pick himself up this time, from this personal setback. "What's keeping her?"

If only he knew.

**So ya  
Thought ya  
Might like to go to the show.  
To feel the warm thrill of confusion  
That space cadet glow.**

**Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine?  
Is this not what you expected to see?  
If you want to find out what's behind these cold eyes  
You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise.**

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**A/N#2: Hello! Firstly, if you're a regular reader of my work, my apologies for the massive delays in providing updates; there are numerous reasons for my lack of work in fanfiction as of late, including dissatisfaction, writer's block, issues in my personal life surrounding certain events, loss of creativity and college work. On the plus side, I am at least back. On the minus side, it is still likely to be varied on when new chapters turn up for my big stories.**

**Secondly, as you will have seen from the summary, this is part of something called "The Wall Series". This came from an idea I had several months ago whilst listening to an album called "The Wall" by progressive rock group Pink Floyd. It was written almost entirely by their bassist Roger Waters, and is a rock opera describing the life of Pink, a disillusioned and bitter rock star, and is autobiographical to an extent on Waters' own career at the time of writing, albeit taken to more extremes. The story revolves around the issues of loneliness, isolation, disenchantment and facism, with a healthy dose of sex, drugs and generally madness thrown in. Anyway, back on track, "The Wall" features some of the finest lyrical work going for one album, and there's plenty of it: it was a double album, consisting of twenty six tracks, of varying length and genre, with each one forming part of Pink's tale. It occured to me whilst listening that if you look around, there are plenty of songfics in the world. But an albumfic? They exist, but are generally a lot rarer. At first, I considered spinning the entire album into a massive collection of one-shots for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a particular emphasis on the character of Loki. Then, I realized a greater challenge; creating twenty six one-shot songfics, one for each song, and using an different canon for each one. On top of which, I decided to not use any previous canons I had written for, thereby removing myself from Sonic the Hedgehog, Harry Potter and Star Wars.**

**So, I would like to take this moment to welcome you, readers, to "The Wall Series", beginning with this, the first track from the album, "In the Flesh?". All being well, over the next year or so, I will write and upload twenty-five more stories, each set in a different universe, each telling a different story, inspired by the lyrics of Pink Floyd's masterpiece of an album. Wish me luck.**

**The next track is called "The Thin Ice", and I believe, as I write this, it will tackle one of the biggest fandoms on this website; Twilight. Also, I am going to publish each one-shot seperately, and although this is rated a T, do not expect every story to; "The Wall" is a hell of a dark album and I am not going to fluff it up, unless I feel like it. As always, reviews and constructive critical advice is much loved. Until the next time, folks!**


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